Still Waters
by Dear Cheetoh Breath
Summary: Tara's POV of a night spent in the Bronze by the Scooby Gang the summer after "The Gift."


Title: Still Waters  
Rating R: language, implied f/f and m/m  
Setting: This takes place in the Bronze about a month after "The Gift."  
Tara's POV   
A special thanks to my beta readers, Akbar Jr. and Puck.  
  
  
  
  
Yes, the jewelry counter in the store was a good idea. Everybody loves pentagrams. No, I don't wear those. I don't need to. Back in school? No. Well, I valued my life and I liked my bones unbroken. And I've forgotten whether I still have a hand under this cast because I think it might have been made of my crumbling bones but I'll save that comment for later. Yeah, I wore crosses and crucifixes. That was what was done. They came in beige boxes with the thin layer of fuzzy stuff on the outside and polyester satin on the inside and they were given with hopeful smiles. So I had a crucifix I wore out at night and I said I'd stay out of trouble and it'd shine against my shirt even in the dark.  
  
It was dark and we were in a car and the front seat must have been shrinking because she kept getting closer. And she took the crucifix between her fingers and then she put it in her mouth and sucked the chain in slowly until her lips were on my throat and I had to be right there. And I won't mention that the next time I didn't need the necklace to get her head right there.   
  
Xander's handling the beer pretty well. I can see from the flush starting on his face and the awkwardness of his hands that it's not from a large amount of practice. He's got the genes for it, though, a hollow leg, a happy warm buzz just starting when these friends are stumbling and vomiting. He'll still have good dexterity when Anya lolls under him with her mouth open and her mind small and floating.  
  
This is something I shouldn't think about. I shouldn't wonder how long Anya could drag it out, or how Xander would use those fingers. Compartmentalize. Think about picking up Tylenol for Willow in the morning. Smell how the lite beer Willow chose, despite what you told her, is plastic where it should be warm, crinkly where it should be glowing. Pay attention to the conversation. Smile now. Willow's telling a joke.  
  
Oh, do I want another? It looks like I'm going to be driving back, Willow's so pink, holding onto the stool. Fuck it all, yes I do. Yes, I swear. Not often. No, Anya, I don't know why such a great percentage of profanity consists of words for sex. Maybe it's because we're not supposed to talk about it so much. Oh, good, you didn't say that last remark out loud. Say 'merde.' And now we've switched. Yes, it is a law that all French teachers must have that smell. Eurodisney funk. Eau de Jerry Lewis. You know, Willow, "The Nutty Professor." Flubber.  
  
She's laughing too much. We're not that funny. It's not good to laugh at the things inside your head. Not polite. Looks uppity. Looks crazy. What _would_ happen if a vampire wore a mood ring? Sure, we could find out. "Happy 127th birthday, Spike."  
  
It's okay to think about Spike now. Anya is asleep with her head on the table and Xander and Willow are talking about something safe and old. Tune in. Think about how he's at the house right now. Inhabiting. Taking up more space than his size. Taking space from everyone else. Touching everything with fast stained hands. Remember what your hands used to look like, black polish, black dirt, black bracelets, black tape. Remember purification by fire, holding the disk over your head, perched on your thumb, pulling the flames downward to the ground, engulfed and safe.  
  
I'm sipping this one slowly, nursing it, though it'd be more correct to say it's nursing me. She said if you can count all your teeth with your tongue and not lose count you haven't drunk enough. She had very nice eyes, and she'd pull me against her where her skin was softest. I couldn't see her eyes then, but I'd remember what they looked like when she laughed at me.  
  
Willow said my name and I'm back. Take Anya to the bathroom? What are you going to do with Xander while I'm gone? Shouldn't someone else have to do this? Of course I don't ask these questions. I help Anya walk, but I watch carefully where I put my hands. I saw her watching me hug Dawn. Her eyes were on my hands. She wasn't worried that I'd scratch her with my cast. And I don't think she knows that I've been watched like this before and part of me wants to grab her ass and shove her against the tile wall and let her be right and have everyone take her side even though she's drunk as a lord and his lady and their alcoholic children and Willow will take my side so Xander will take my side and she'll keep watching my hands. These are bad thoughts. Hands on her arms and her bare back sweaty and sour and let go as soon as she's in the stall.  
  
Stay in here even though she's saying that she can get back on her own. Stay and be the good friend. Stay because Willow will be looking at Xander. Because she'll be looking for Oz like she does when you say something at a certain angle or when your voice gets too husky against the back of her neck. And you're not Xander and you're not Oz because you were busy with the hard and slippery places and people when Xander was her Xander and Oz was her Oz, and you're left being her Tara. Sweet good quiet Tara, always good for a spell, for an ego boost, for a fuck. You're the fill-in for the rough places, soft against the shards, don't ask for more than you're given.  
  
Stay and fix your hair, agonize over the roots and the color that's never been right since that time in another bathroom like this wearing old undershirts and black polished fingers in your hair saying "Blond is your color," and the roots were so gloriously trashy against all the new clean things, tiny token visual rebellion. But you're clean now. I'm clean and I'm good and my hair isn't multicolored and crazy or a sign of laziness and my wrists haven't been bruised in years. Smile. You look good. I don't but you do.  
  
Help Anya now. Walk back and smile. She's not usually like this. I have so little experience with drunk people, really. Oh, Donny? Sure, maybe him, sometimes. I don't know. The couch is much nicer than the table. It's okay, I'll sit across from Willow. Xander, don't get up. Your thighs are touching from hip to knee and you can smell her neck, but I don't mind.  
  
You're talking about that? How did that come up? Oh, a song. These bands. Oh. Laugh. I'm not an expert. Willow, don't look at me like that. "What _do_ lesbians do together?" Good question, Xander. How many beers did it take you to get there? Oh, well, to answer - Drop your skirt and get over here, Willow. No, don't say that. Let your face freeze a little bit. Send your girlfriend over tonight. Listen to what she tells you if she survives. Willow had a good answer. My words are going to fall down all over each other if I try to talk now. Premature ejaculation of the plosives. Think about Xander with Spike's dick in his mouth. Stuttering cured.   
  
Why am I laughing? Well, see, it reminded me of this myth about the Norse god/goddess of gender equity.... That worked. They're talking about a movie now. It's not okay to think about the person in the Odin shirt and how big that shirt was on you when you left and how the bruises turned the same shade of blue as your eyes one day and you showed them off in the shrinking front seat of a car and they were so sensitive that you could feel every crease of her lips on them. That kind of thing is wrong. Wrong like when Willow digs her fingers in too hard and too fast and makes you bite your lip. Wrong like when you pin her arms above her head and hold her down until she wraps her legs around you and shudders and gasps for more. And thinking about it makes it more wrong.  
  
Nice. Yes, I'm very nice. I don't even come close to filling the Oz-shaped hole, even though, technically, I'm bigger. But I'm small in your eyes, an accessory of Willow's you only talk to when she's not here. I've been here for a year and a half and I'm still peripheral. Not a part of the boxed set. At right angles to every conversation. I must seem incredibly nice to you, because everything that doesn't want to eat you or kill you or send you to hell must be so nice. And maybe I want to do all those things and maybe I will do all those things but because I'm nice, I don't go around talking about it. I don't think about it. I'm nice and I make a very nice place-holder but Xander wants Oz back and Willow wants and doesn't want Oz back and Buffy wanted Willow and Xander for herself, only coupled when she's coupled and everybody in single or paired formation. Stop now. Thinking about Buffy isn't good. It's a constant in Willow's head like a radio station, all talk of "oh no" and "what now" and "can I can I can I" and if she hears an echo she'll listen all day.   
  
Someone said Buffy. They must have heard you. Oh, _that_ Buffy. Yes, this would be a good place for her to practice. Talking to people, moving with people, drinking. And Willow, I don't think you should be drinking anymore, you're falling through all the cracks, but I'll just look concerned and maybe she'll see. Because I have no experience with this. Because I'm nice.  
  
The beer tastes like air now, like seafoam, something to breathe in. I notice that Willow is giving me that stare, like I'm something shiny and unexpected that she was lucky enough to find on a muddy sidewalk. Exotic and useful as a loonie in Alabama, or California, or any of those states below the country's belt. And I remember to enjoy it, because it means I'm not invisible, not yet, and there's still someone in the world who's happy to see me. Still happy to see me after. Doesn't park three blocks away behind the trees where it's too dark to see a hurricane.   
  
It's dark in here too, so dark they can't see Buffy behind them, under them, being dragged after the pauses in their sentences. There's just enough light to see Joyce out on the table, wrapped up in our best motives, thicker than plaster, thicker than bedroom doors.  
  
I want to tell them that I want to go home. There's smoke and noise everywhere and it's later than nice people stay out. I want to drag Willow home and put her to sleep and somehow make everything okay for when she wakes up. I want to tell them that I'm going blind so I don't see the colors break between Xander and Anya, like lavender and burgundy incense smoke being blown around by a ceiling fan. And I won't see Giles traveling back and forth between the tiny islands of the things that he knows because the new things clash with his old furniture. I want to tell them that I'm going to go deaf so I don't feel the need to choke every scream and moan in my throat every time for fear that Dawn will hear. And then I won't hear the whispering of guilt for my whorish, deviant, dirty need to interact, correspond, reciprocate, skin on skin and tongue and finger and use two bodies for something ultimately useless. And then my head won't burn when Dawn uses her voice to drink every little bit of a mother she can find in me, shoddily sated day to day, then traded off to one of the English men around the house.  
  
There are a lot of things I don't tell them. I don't tell them that I held Willow until she stopped trembling the night after Buffy died. And that I made her tremble again after that and she fell asleep with her head between my breasts and she slept through straight till morning.  
  
Yes, I think it is time we all headed home. And how kind of you to realize this just before Willow can barely walk without my arms around her. Yes, I'll make sure to call tomorrow. No, not before noon. Willow's cheek is hot and soft on my shoulder, and she mentions that once again I was the quietest one in the room. 


End file.
